


The Second Secret

by MaryWollstonecrafty



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, and pining, im a wreck, lots of staring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-06-03 21:50:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6627877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryWollstonecrafty/pseuds/MaryWollstonecrafty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ronan Lynch has a crush.</p><p>Or a study in Ronan studying Adam.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Second Secret

**Author's Note:**

> so i read all three books in preparation for the raven king in less than a week and i am emotionally destroyed.
> 
> i hope you enjoy the product of all my ronan/adam feelings. 
> 
> pls come cry about these losers with me.

I

When Gansey strides into Latin, 25 minutes late with Adam Parrish at his heels, Ronan Lynch knows he is in trouble. 

It’s the hands he thinks. Adam’s hands, delicate long fingers, a symphony of tendons moving under the tan skin. Hands that look like they could have been carved from marble save for the motor oil constantly under his nails. God his hands, Ronan is sure it all started with his hands.

He could handle it when Adam was ghost who haunted Aglionby around the edges, kicking his ass in Latin, before disappearing on that shitbag of a bike before anyone had the chance to speak to him. Things were working just fine then, he didn’t see why Gansey couldn’t seem to leave well enough alone.

 

II

Adam first comes to Monmouth on rainy Sunday afternoon, a green-yellow bruise blossoming across his delicate cheekbone. 

“The fuck happened to you?” Ronan calls from across the cavernous space, not bothering to rise from the chair he’s draped side-ways in. 

“The garage, there was a wrench…” Adam trails off, not even bothering with a fully fledged excuse.

The sight of him squirming, broken, uncomfortable, and trying desperately to stand still makes something stir in Ronan’s stomach. He hates it. He walks into his room and slams the door. He hears Gansey mutter an apology before sliding on a pair of headphones and letting the wailing of guitars permanently damage his hearing, drowning out the sound of his heart beating like a drum in his chest.

  

III

Adam is not the kind of person who feels the needs to fill silences, and Ronan appreciates that about him. They take to spending time together silently, sprawled across the floor of Monmouth, Adam diligently taking notes, Ronan flipping through nothing on his phone. He never ever looks at Adam’s hands. Especially not while he’s tracing out Latin phrases in his delicate slanting script. Nope. He doesn’t look. He swears. 

 

IV

Adam Parrish appears in Ronan’s dreams.

In dreams Adam laughs in Ronan’s face and tells him he’s a fool to stoke the spark of hope that’s appeared in him. In Ronan’s dreams, Dream-Adam’s mouth twists in a cruel smile that looks nothing like Real-Adam’s, and he asks why Ronan would ever think anyone could love him. Let alone someone like Adam.

Ronan wakes covered in sweat, and walks to the kitchen-bathroom-laundry to grab a beer, drinking away the dream, and burying his hope deep down in a place where no one can find it.

 

V

Ronan thinks beating the shit out of Adam’s dad is the best thing he’s ever done. 

 

VI

Adam is both more and less, somehow, after he gives himself to Cabeswater. He no longer squirms beneath the surface of his skin, but his eyes are distant, as if he’s always looking at something just beyond them. 

Ronan is only ever looking at Adam. He wonders if he notices. He wonders if he gives a shit if he does.

 

VII

He thinks fucking Kavinsky will take away the pain.

It doesn’t.

If anything it only makes him feel worse about himself. It’s a novel feeling, like finding a sub-basement, in the hellscape that is his brain. He wonders if Adam notices the finger-print shaped bruises marking up his body. He knows it doesn’t matter if he does.

 

VIII

In his dreams Adam touches him, perfect hands ghosting over Ronan’s body. It’s been so long since he’s been touched by someone who doesn’t hate him.

But Adam is speaking Latin so Ronan knows it isn’t real. God, he wishes it were real.

He wakes, covered in a thin sheen of sweat, and takes his cock in his own hands to finish the job. The shame of his wanting breaks over him like waves, and he comes with a strangled cry that sounds something like Adam’s name.

Tomorrow he will go to church and pray to be excised of his demons.

 

IX

He takes Adam to The Barns and it feels like showing him his own heart, beating raw and exposed.

Adam takes it with both hands without a word.

 

X

Kavinsky dies, adding to the blood staining his hands. In his dreams he chokes on it, bubbling up from his throat hot and metallic. It fucking sucks to miss something you thought you hated. He speeds down the highway, smoking a joint and blasting terrible euro-trash electronica when he misses him.

It makes him hate himself a little more and a little less.

 

XI

He notices Adam staring back. He wonders if it means he should stare less. He doesn’t.

 

XII

Adam aches like a festering wound under Ronan’s skin.

He wonders if he will ever learn to love in a way that does not hurt.

 

XIII

 

When Adam delivers him the envelope of his plans for Greenmantle, Ronan is shaken and impressed. He wonders what other kinds of demons and darkness lurk beneath the surface of Adam Parrish. Only someone truly fucked up could come up with all the terrible shit Adam planned out. Only someone as fucked up as Ronan.

He curls up on the hard pew and gets to work. In his dreams the girl with the large eyes greets him. “There is nothing you would not do for him.” She states plainly.

"Tell me something I don't already fucking know."

 

XIV

 

He takes to knocking on the door of Adam’s St. Agnes apartment late at night just to see Adam in his sweats, messy hair, pen between his teeth, and a look on his face he didn’t have time to fake.

Ronan curls up on his floor with his own pile of homework and waits until Adam is done so he can cheat off of him. He is capable of doing all the work himself, sure, but looking at the pages full of Adam’s spidery handwriting feels something like looking inside of his brain. And fuck, he’s smart. He’s so so smart.

Sometimes he falls asleep on the floor and wakes with a pillow under his head that smells like damp moss and magic.

 

XV

 

They’re getting closer, he can feel it. To Glendower and to each other. There’s a kind of frantic buzzing electricity that seems to follow them everywhere they go.

He fears if he reaches over and touches Adam he will go up in flames. At this point he’d accept his fate willingly.

 

XVI

 

Every night Adam meets him in his dreams. Adam rakes his hands through Ronan’s hair, grown out here, dark like Declan’s, in curls like Matthew’s. Dream-Adam’s lips graze Ronan’s ear as he whispers something in Latin Ronan can’t quite make out. 

Ronan wakes with a start, twin laurel wreaths in his hands.

 

XVII

 

Ronan keeps taking Adam to The Barns, and the sight of him, strolling casually among misty fields, hands shoved in the pockets of his Costco jeans, is almost too much to bear. Ronan wonders if this is what happiness feels like. He wonders if that’s why he’s so terrified.

 

XVIII

 

The girl is waiting for him in his dreams.

“He’s looking for you.” She says. 

“Who’s looking for me?” 

“Your Magician.”

From across the summer green grass of Cabeswater he hears his name. Not Greywarren. Ronan.

“Wake up.” He wills himself, and wakes, sweat-covered, panting and alone in his dark room in Monmouth, the words “your magician” echoing in his head.

 

XIX

 

Ronan is content to bury Adam deep within the confines of his heart, the same place his father and Kavinsky rest, poison leeching out into the soil of his soul. Ronan is content to stay miserable. He is good at being miserable, it is a song he knows all the lyrics to, a dance in which he’s memorized every step.

Ronan Lynch is good at being lonely.

 

XX

 

The source of their magic is the same.

The source of their anger is too. Fathers who left them broken.

When Ronan looks in Adam’s eyes late at night over cold pizza and homework, moonlight in Adam’s hair, he feels as safe and understood in a way he hasn’t since his home was ripped from him. It slices, hot and precise like a razor blade between his ribs.

 

XXI

 

He can’t sleep.

In his dreams all the trees whisper his name. A chorus of “Adam” carried on the breeze.

 

XXII

 

Adam asks why Ronan can’t stop staring.

Ronan doesn’t lie, _can't_ lie.

 

XXIII.

 

Adam Parrish is not a secret Ronan Lynch is good at keeping.


End file.
